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Evolution of cooling-channel properties for varying aspect ratio

Conference Paper · July 2013

DOI: 10.1051/eucass/201608117

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 5TH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE FOR AERONAUTICS AND SPACE SCIENCES (EUCASS)

Evolution of cooling-channel properties for varying aspect

ratio
M. Pizzarelli, F. Nasuti and M. Onofri
Sapienza University of Rome
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Via Eudossiana 18, I-00184 Rome, Italy

Abstract
High performance liquid rocket engines are often characterized by rectangular cooling channels with high
aspect ratio (channel height-to-width ratio) because of their proven superior cooling efficiency with respect
to a conventional design. However, the identification of the optimum aspect ratio is not a trivial task. In
the present study a trade-off analysis is performed on a cooling channel system that can be of interest
for rocket engines. This analysis requires multiple cooling channel flow calculations and thus cannot be
efficiently performed by CFD solvers. Therefore, a proper numerical approach, referred to as quasi-2D
model, is used to have fast and accurate predictions of cooling system properties. This approach relies on
its capability of describing the thermal stratification that occurs in the coolant and in the wall structure,
as well as the coolant warming and pressure drop along the channel length. Results of the analysis show
the existence of an optimum channel aspect ratio that minimizes the requested pump power needed to
overcome losses in the cooling circuit.

1. Introduction

Cooling channels with high aspect ratio of the cross section λ = h/b, often referred to as HARCC (high-aspect-ratio
cooling channels), have the potential to reduce the thermal strain in the wall material and to increase the material
strength by substantially reducing its maximum temperature. For this reason HARCC have been studied by NASA
since many years [1, 2, 3, 4] and introduced in engines like the European Vulcain [5]. In fact, reducing wall temperature
allows increasing engine life and cost of fabrication, as resulted during development and production of Space Shuttle
main engine and thus studied subsequently. However, it has been demonstrated [6] that if the channel aspect ratio is too
high, the cooling efficiency vanishes. In fact, in case of strongly asymmetric distributed heat fluxes around the channel
perimeter and cooling geometries with high aspect ratios, limited coolant mixing and inhomogeneous temperature
distribution (also referred to as “thermal stratification”) are expected. This, in turn, can lead to cooling inefficiency of
HARCC.
Aim of the present study is to emphasize that the optimum aspect ratio exists and depends on the set of assigned
constraints. In particular, the constraints that characterize the cooling system are divided in two families: those related
to the realization of the device (weight, dimensions, manufacturing capability, etc.) and those related to the system
operation (maximum allowable wall temperature and coolant pressure drop, available coolant mass flow rate, coolant
power loss, etc.). The present trade-off analysis is performed on cooling channel conditions representative of those
occurring in liquid rocket engines. In this study, the cooling channel aspect ratio that would minimize the coolant
power loss is found with the constraint of fixed weight and channel height. The trade-off analysis is performed by
means of a numerical approach presented and validated in [7, 8]. This approach, which is based on a quasi-2D model,
permits to have fast and complete information on the thermal evolution in cooling systems characterized by HARCC,
because of its capability to describe the thermal stratification as well as the temperature distribution along the whole
cooling channel structure.

2. Test case description

The considered cooling system is composed of straight rectangular passages which contour a cylindrical chamber with
an internal radius r = 150 mm, a length L = 400 mm, and an internal wall thickness sw = 1 mm. The reference
cooling channel geometry is characterized by rib and channel thickness tw = b = 2 mm, and height h = 16 mm,

c 2013 by M.Pizzarelli, F.Nasuti, and M.Onofri. Published by the EUCASS association with permission.
Copyright
M.PIZZARELLI, F.NASUTI, M.ONOFRI

which corresponds to λ = 8. The resulting number of cooling channels is N = 236. Of course, for a given internal
radius, the circumferential length of the cooling circuit, 2πr = N(b + tw ), is constant for every channel geometry. The
selected criterion to vary the channel aspect ratio is obtained considering the constraints of h = const (which means,
same overall dimensions) and N · h · tw = const (which means, for a given material, same weight). The dependency of
the geometric parameters on channel aspect ratio λ is shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1: Dependency of the cooling circuit geometric parameters to channel aspect ratio.

In this analysis, the solid material is assumed to have a hydrodynamically smooth surface and a thermal conduc-
tivity kw = 390 W/m K, that is a typical value of the copper alloys used in rocket engine applications, such as AMZIRC
or OFHC-copper [9]. The hot-gas is characterized by a constant value of heat transfer coefficient and adiabatic wall
temperature along the chamber length: hw,hg = 16000 W/m2 K and T aw,hg = 3500 K, which are representative of
conditions of high-performance rocket engines thrust chambers. The external wall is assumed adiabatic. The coolant
is supercritical hydrogen and the inlet coolant conditions are T in = 80 K and pin = 80 bar. Finally, for the reference
case of λ = 8, the mass flow rate of the single channel is ṁ = 0.171 kg/s; thus, the resulting Reynolds number of the
turbulent flow is Re = 4 · 106 .

3. Results

With reference to the cooling channel design of Fig. 1, two different parametric studies with variable channel aspect
ratio are performed. The first parametric study refers to the case of constant coolant mass flow rate ṁtot = 40.28 kg/s,
which is the value used for the reference case of λ = 8. Also inlet coolant temperature and pressure are the same for
all the considered channel aspect ratios. The aspect ratio is varied from 4 to 20. The resulting wall temperature and the
heat flux at the hot-gas side, obtained with the quasi-2D model, are presented in Fig. 2.
The wall temperature decreases and the heat flux increases for increasing channel aspect ratio. Moreover, it
is worth emphasizing a peculiar thermal behavior for increasing channel aspect ratio. In fact, if λ ≤ 8 the wall
temperature, after the flow development close to the channel inlet, reaches a maximum between x ∼ 50 mm and
∼ 100 mm and then decreases (Fig. 2(a)). This is explained by the heat transfer decrease in the flow development
region and the subsequent heat transfer increase due to the increasing coolant thermal conductivity with temperature;
the minimum heat transfer coefficient reached after flow development causes the maximum wall temperature. The
decrease is nearly 60 K in case of λ = 4 while, in the reference case of λ = 8, the wall temperature is nearly constant
all along the channel length for x & 50 mm. A further increase of the aspect ratio implies that the wall temperature
progressively increases in the streamwise direction. The temperature increase is nearly 125 K in case of λ = 20.
Note that the wall temperature increase is limited by the channel length; that is, the longer the channel the larger
the temperature increase. Thus, even if the wall temperature level of λ = 20 is well below that of λ = 8, it must
be considered that a marked increase of the wall temperature is not wanted in the actual application because of the
possible excess of the maximum allowable wall temperature after a certain channel length. The deterioration of the
cooling capability in case of very high aspect ratio can be easily related to the heat flux decrease along the channel
length (see Fig. 2(b)). This effect, which is due to the limited mixing and thermal stratification within the coolant

2
 COOLING CHANNEL PROPERTIES FOR VARYING ASPECT RATIO

(a) Wall temperature. (b) Wall heat flux.

Figure 2: Hot-gas side parametric behavior.

that takes place in case of high aspect ratio and has been already noticed in Ref. [10, 6], cannot be described with a
one-dimensional model because of the absence of the coolant and wall thermal conduction in the radial direction.
In Fig. 3(a) the coolant pressure drop, ∆p0 , and the power loss, ∆W = ṁtot ∆p0 , that is the requested coolant
pump power to overcome pressure loss in the cooling circuit, is shown for the considered aspect ratio range. The
results highlight that in case of constant coolant mass flow rate the reduction of maximum wall temperature with
increase of channel aspect ratio is offset by the increase of both pressure drop and power loss. Passing from λ = 4 to
λ = 20 these variables increase by a factor of about 13.
The second parametric study is performed considering variable coolant mass flow rate with the constraint of
maximum hot-gas side wall temperature. The selected value is T w,hg = 730 K, which pertains to the reference case
of λ = 8 and ṁtot = 40.28 kg/s. Searching for the required coolant mass flow rate is made iteratively so that the wall
max
temperature satisfies the constraint T w,hg = 730 K. Of course, due to the effect of limited coolant mixing and thermal
stratification in case of high aspect ratios seen in Fig. 2(a), the maximum wall temperature is encountered in the initial
part of the channel length if λ < 8 or at the channel exit if λ > 8.

(a) Constraint of imposed coolant mass flow rate. (b) Constraint of imposed maximum wall temperature.

Figure 3: Cooling channel parametric behavior.

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 M.PIZZARELLI, F.NASUTI, M.ONOFRI

The behavior of the coolant pressure drop, mass flow rate, and power loss, is shown in Fig. 3(b) as a function of
channel aspect ratio, within the range 5 ≤ λ ≤ 20. Note that the cases of aspect ratio lower than 5 are not considered
max
because they are not able to satisfy the constraints of T w,hg = 730 K and subsonic flow. The required constraint of
imposed maximum wall temperature can be achieved with decreasing coolant mass flow rate as channel aspect ratio
increases. In particular, passing from λ = 5 to 20, the mass flow rate almost halves, ranging from 58 kg/s to 31 kg/s.
The coolant pressure drop exhibits a minimum for λ = 8, which is ∆p0 = 8.6 bar; the pressure drop for smaller or
larger aspect ratios is consistently higher, being ∆p0 = 11.8 bar for λ = 5 and ∆p0 = 14.6 bar for λ = 20. The
minimum pressure drop is due to the fact that the coolant heat transfer coefficient increases with λ because of the
hydraulic diameter reduction but this behavior is limited by the “thermal stratification” that occurs for very high aspect
ratios. These conflicting phenomena, for a given maximum wall temperature, lead to a minimum pressure drop. As
a consequence, also the power loss through the cooling circuit presents a minimum value. This minimum is located
around λ = 10; with respect to λ = 5 and λ = 20, the power loss is reduced by 55% and 31%, respectively.

4. Conclusions

A trade-off analysis has been carried out to study the performance of cooling channel for varying channel aspect ratio.
Considering different aspect ratios and coolant mass flow rates such that the wall temperature remains below a threshold
value, an optimum value is finally identified as the channel configuration that yields the minimum power loss or the
minimum pressure drop in the cooling circuit. The analysis has followed the strategy in varying channel aspect ratio
by assuming constant weight and height of the channels. This strategy has led to a minimum of power loss at λ = 10,
which is about half the value at λ = 5. Finally, the analysis has emphasized that, in case of aspect ratios larger than
λ > 10, the beneficial effect of HARCC is reduced because of the excessive coolant thermal stratification in the radial
direction..

References

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